


Alabama, Arkansas

by RibsGrowBack



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubble, Growing Up, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-13
Updated: 2012-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RibsGrowBack/pseuds/RibsGrowBack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the kink meme, set to "Home" by Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros. Dave remembers his life with Bro via dreambubbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alabama, Arkansas

_You lie awake on the asteroids most nights--Designated Sleeping Times, as Kanaya calls it. Sometimes there's an ache in your chest, like someone stabbed a sword through it. Sometimes you still ache from faceplanting on the ground in LOWAS after trying to break an unbreakable katana. You can barely ever sleep on your pile of scalemates and swords and occasional the occasional smuppet. But some nights you slide into dreams, flow into bubbles of sweet memories that leave the bitter taste of tears in your mouth upon waking._  
  
Bro moved you around a lot.  
  
Alabama, Arkansas. You grew up in the A-states; that's how you learned your alphabet. All you could afford was a shitty basement apartment in sweet home Alabama, a duplex with a leaky roof in the Land of Opportunity. When the neighbors would fight and scream, or when you would dream of a dark purple place with horrible things in the sky, Bro would wrap you in blankets and take you for a drive in his pickup, the clear bright sky stretching out forever as he sang along to the growl of the engine. Sometimes you cried when he uprooted you, broke your poker face. He'd kneel, take off your shades and look you in the eye, wiping your snuffly tears away with his rough thumbs. He'd say in his rumbly deep voice, "Bro, we might be moving again, but we ain't leavin' home. Home is wherever I'm with you."  
  
 _Terezi curls up with you tonight, whispering in her hissy-bright voice that she misses her lusus and doesn't want to be alone. She pillows her head on your chest and mumbles in her sleep, dreaming bright cherry dreams. You hug her and sigh and stare into space because you miss your lusus, too, but no sharp-elbowed red-eyed alien girl can fix that._  
  
You were a difficult kid.  
  
You cussed and spat and got in fights at school. Bro was too young to know what to do with you, worked too much to spend enough time to learn. One day he came home smelling like fryer grease and disappointment to find the split-level that you were renting empty and he searched every inch of Tulsa to find you hiding in an alleyway, throwing broken bottles and chipped bricks and city trash at a brick wall as hard as you could. A few years later you called him from a payphone at the far end of Louisville with a black eye and a chipped tooth and wounded pride and broke down begging him to come get you. He pulled up in his rusty pickup still in a blue Wal-Mart apron. You drove around all day 'cause it wasn't like he could go back to work; he'd quit when they wouldn't let him leave to come get you. You've still got Louisville memorized as a place full of gold early-evening light, as the smell of Bro smoking Pall Malls with the window rolled down so you wouldn't breathe any in, of a cassette tape with a slapdash playlist that blared Dr. Dre after Paul Simon and Megadeath right before Tori Amos and Johnny Cash. He'd laughed loud and golden and said, "Alleyways and payphone calls... hot damn, Dave, I've been everywhere with you."  
  
 _You pull your cape around you like a blanket, try to stay awake. Your eyes are scratchy-dry with uncried tears behind your shades and you miss home so much you can taste it. You miss the smell of cities and cheap beer and cigarettes and wheat fields, the cracked fake-leather in the cab of Bro's truck. Rose pads over and asks if you're okay and you wave her off. You eventually fall into a dream bubble, remembering everything you were trying to forget._  
  
There were a few weeks when Bro couldn't make ends meet.  
  
The spring that you lost your two front teeth and informed your bewildered teacher that there was no goddamned tooth fairy, you got evicted from the cramped, stuffy studio apartment in Santa Fe. It was after you both got the flu and the medical bills left no survivors on your funds, so Bro loaded up the truck with everything he didn't sell and spent all day every day searching for any work he could get. It took a couple of weeks of standing in line at the soup kitchen and showering in the locker room before he got enough together for a new place to stay, and you stayed in a shelter with him when it rained but on clear nights he'd drive you out to the country and you'd sleep in the bed of his truck under the stars. You ran barefoot on those almost-summer nights, laughing 'til you thought you'd die and tackling each other with puppets and strifing by the last shreds of sunlight. Tucked into your sleeping bag one night, Lil Cal wrapped around you, Bro had apologized for fucking up. You'd smacked him with a puppet ass and told him to shut up. "Bro, man-oh-man, Bro, you're my best friend." He shoved the puppet back in your face but you stood up in the truck bed and screamed into the nothingness, "With you around... there ain't _nothing_ that I need!"  
  
You fall asleep one night and slide into a more recent bubble. Bro's waiting in the high-rise in Houston, two frosty orange sodas on the makeshift coffee table by his futon. The light streaming in the dirty windows is a weird combination of the Alternian moons and a smoggy Texas sunrise, dim and golden-green. He gives you a one-armed hug, tosses you a soda, tells you he's missed your sorry ass. He's got a hole in his front and you try not to look at it so you say, “Bro?”  
  
“Yeah dude?”  
  
“Do you remember that day you fell out the window?”  
  
“I sure do, you came jumping out after me.”  
  
“Well, you fell on the concrete and nearly broke your ass and you were bleeding all over the place, and I rushed you off to the hospital. I was eleven and I couldn't fucking drive but I did anyway.... Do you remember that?”  
  
“Yeah, I do.”  
  
“Well, there’s something I never told you about that night.”  
  
“What didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“While you were sitting in the cab, smoking the cigarette you thought was going to be your last, I was realized how much I love you. And I never told you ‘til just now.”  
  
“Now I know.”  
  
"Love you, Bro."  
  
"Love you too, Dave."  
  
 _The heating malfunctioned today, leaving you all annoyed and soaked in sweat. Memories prickle at the edges of your vision, but you wish they wouldn't. It's so much more painful to remember._  
  
In Wichita, Bro taught you endurance.  
  
You spent grueling hours running up and down stairs, doing calisthenics until your muscles burned. He did it all right along with you, pushing you hard and harder but being so damn proud when you didn't collapse. One brutally hot day when the newscasters told old ladies to stay inside and bitched about heatstroke, you cut school and he cut work and you just ran. You tied your shirts around your heads when you started to sweat, you raced each other from one end of the city to the other. Everyone else stayed inside and cranked their A/C, but Bro followed you into the park, through the urban jungle and through the dark. You took breaks for as long as it took to buy a Big Gulp full of ice water and chug it, then kept running, whooping and laughing even as your muscles burned and the heat tried to kick your asses. In the hot empty streets you were running free, and on a Big Gulp break, you said in wonderment, "Christ, it's like it's only you and me." He'd scoffed and dumped the rest of his cup over your head, taking off down another deserted road. When you got home late that night, your skin was crunchy with sweat and cherry-red with sunburn. Bro wasn't much better, but as he poured aloe on your back he laughed and laughed, "Geez, kid, you're somethin' to see."  
  
 _It's been three years since your brother got stabbed through the heart. Sometimes you can forget, but some days the memories fill you up and choke you with missing him. But you're doing okay. You're sixteen, you're strong, and your bro is dead but you've been able to move on. And today is the big day, the day you've all been waiting for. John and Jade and Davesprite will finally be here, you'll finally get off this rock. When they arrive, even you smile. Breaking the poker face is worth it when you're smothered by two gangly Prospit twins hugging you tight enough to burst. But there's still an empty spot inside of you, a place that only one person can fill.  
  
You weren't expecting that person to apppear, sixteen years old--as old as he was when he found you, lying in a crater--and golden-eyed and very much alive. _  
  
You run towards your bro, unable to believe what you're seeing. He's battle-worn, holding hands with a boy who could be John's double, and he's got a tattoo of Hella Jeff on his arm. He lets go of Jake, runs towards you. Your faces are open and raw and he laughs sadly and through his tears he says, "Well shit, I am _home_." and you wipe away his tears with your calloused thumbs and laugh breathlessly, "Home's wherever I'm with you."


End file.
